Azure Paler than the Sky
by Gerald Tarrant
Summary: What does Tsuchiya Ruka have left after everything is over? Spoilers for episodes 28 and 29.


Azure Paler than the Sky

Tsuchiya Ruka. Takes place after episode 29 and contains spoilers up till then. Dialogue partially taken from ep 29 and also from _Dai Hachi Maku Fukaki Ruri Iro no Kage_ ("Shadow of Deepest Azure"), the Juri/Ruka/Touga drama track on the _Saa, Watashi o Engage shite_ ("Now Engage Yourself to Me") OST. Translation of the track can be found [here][1]. Title of the fic comes from the title of episode 29.

_Shoujo Kakumei Utena and all characters are property of B-Papas, Saitou Chiho, Shogaku-kan, and TV Tokyo. Please do not repost without permission._

**Azure Paler than the Sky**

_Believe in miracles…so that your wish comes true._

There was just one word on the slip of paper crumpled up on the countertop as I stood unmoving, looking at my fingers like they were foreign extensions of my body, just now appeared out of the club of a hand, growing gnarled and knobby like old roots from the smooth adolescent flesh. The paper was yellow in the light of the outside streetlamps. The word was no longer visible.  
I used to sleep with that piece of paper under my pillow, tucked into my pillowcase. And when I would wake at night, when the pain became too great and the drugs which they used to give me every night would not dull the pain, I would grip the paper tightly, squeezing my eyes shut and forcing the tears back down their ducts. Weak things, tears. I was not weak. I would not be weak. What kind of man would I be for her, then?  
That old piece of paper.  
It was time to end the charade.  
The light on the answering machine was blinking and I reached for it instinctively, barely noticing that my satchel was still slung over my shoulder and my books gripped in the other hand. Satchel. Books. I wouldn't be needing them anymore, would I?  
I wondered idly when the first twinges of the pain would come back. When I would no longer be able to stand. When the world would blur in front of my eyes and the fire eat its way from the inside of my body out. I knew that would happen. He had said so. But yet I persisted. I begged for those few days, for the rose signet that he held out to me on his palm, if only I could-  
"Tsuchiya-senpai. I have only you."  
Rubbish. I pressed delete.  
"Tsuchiya-senpai. I have only you."  
Good lord. This girl was more persistent than ants scurrying about after their home had been flattened by an ill-placed foot. I hit the delete button again.  
Odd. There were three messages on the tape, but the third one appeared to be a blank. Sales pitch? Wrong number? Prank call? I waited, listening to the whir of the tape. Then a click. A sigh.  
"Ruka."  
Another sigh and then the beep of the machine. I had frozen at the sound of that voice. Rewinding the machine, I played it again.  
Silence. "Ruka." Click.  
My fingers were trembling. Why had she called me? Why? Why?  
The answering machine's date and time stamp mechanism was broken, and I would have no idea when she had called me.  
_You could call her back_, the voice inside my head nagged. _Ask her what she wanted. Why she didn't leave the rest of her message after all. Ask her to go some-_  
I stopped the rest of that train of thought.  
Even if I had the right to do such a thing, who would want to go on a date with an invalid?  
I had told her not to worry, standing in the rain with the crushed orange of the flower scattering over my foot, over hers. Orange dripping in the rain. I had wanted to add more. That I would stay with her. That I would protect her. That she didn't need to be afraid any longer.  
But I couldn't, because that would be a lie.  
Well, what did it matter? I was a liar anyway. I had lied my way back into school, lied my way through two failed relationships and would soon lie my way out.  
I crossed to my bed, throwing the satchel onto it with no semblance of control, watching my fingers shake with as great an interest as I had watched them after they had crumpled the piece of paper on the counter. It was getting dark. The rain had finally stopped, but I had walked back to the dorm and my uniform was still damp. Kiryuu Touga might have a chauffeur and he might feel sorry enough for me to offer me a ride, but I was still too proud to accept.  
Kiryuu Touga…he had come up to me after Juri had left the arena. She moved like an old woman, slow, shuffling, and I did not move to help her. She didn't need my help anymore, and so I had simply stood and watched her go, the rain trickling down my neck and into the collar of my shirt and into my shoes. I had heard him coming before he spoke.  
"Did you get what you wanted?"  
I was tempted to say something stinging in return, but I was the one hurting, not he. He had nothing to do with it. He was not the Ends of the World.  
"I don't know."  
Touga sighed, and I glanced up at him. Even in the rain he looked clean and pristine, a demi-god on earth dropped out of the heavens, or maybe out of the floating castle that was gray with rainwater. I never knew that rain could dull even floating castles in the air. Interesting.  
"Ruka."  
"Don't say anymore," I interrupted him, waving a hand. "I know the terms of the contract. They're not negotiable."  
"Just so you know." A pause. "I'll miss you, you know."  
I managed to crack a laugh. "That's good to hear."  
Touga shrugged. "If you don't want to believe me, that's fine." His eyes found Juri's hunched form, stopped at the edge of the arena. "What are you going to tell…her?"  
"Shut up already," I said tightly. "None of your business."  
Touga wisely said nothing. She looked so small in the rain. I remembered her larger than life, shining with light. My shining one.  
"I-" I said, and Touga looked sharply at me. "I love Juri best when she's fighting."  
"Oh?"  
If I had been my old self I would never have told anyone this, much less Touga. But standing with him in the middle of the empty arena, just the two of us, it seemed right. "If I could make her shine again…I'd throw my own life away."  
I felt his arm around me, a brotherly sling around the shoulders. Only a few weeks ago that would have brought incredible pain crushing down on my collarbone and my lungs…but now it only was a little uncomfortable. A little.  
"Should I tell her?" Touga said, softly, almost too softly for me to hear over the rain.  
"If Juri cried for me," I said slowly, "if she cried for me…I'd know a world of happiness. For eternity...But if I die, don't tell her. Please."  
If I die. Not when I die. False optimism never helped anyone.  
"No…" I murmured. "When I die. Don't tell her. My last request to you as a duelist."  
Touga's eyes were strangely shadowed as he looked into mine, and he nodded, one long slow nod.  
"You have my word."  
I wondered how much his word really meant, but nodded. Juri was gone. The rain was slowly lessening, but there was no sun above the monochrome clouds. It was cloudy, would be cloudy forever.  
"But even if you did tell her," I said, turning to face him and gently removing his arm from my shoulder. "I'm sure she wouldn't believe you." Smiling at his expression. "That's my Juri."  
_That's my Juri._  
My. My. Did I have any right to call her my?  
There was a twinge in my chest and I rubbed it gently. Soon the pain would return…soon. I should call the hospital. Or perhaps simply show up at the door, saying here I am. Your runaway patient, the prodigal son, returned. I've come back to die. Won't you take me in?  
I sat up, bumping my head slightly on the headboard of the bed, winced. There was a phone book and a phone on the nightstand, solid objects in the midst of a sea of pillboxes and bottles and jars and prescriptions. A man shouldn't need to take poison in order to prolong his own life in a mock agony of living. And yet I did.  
I was stupid like that.  
Of their own accord again, my fingers reached for the phone. They were sure strange tonight, I mused, watching trance-like as they pecked at the glowing neon yellow numbers, one number at a time.  
The yellow piece of paper on the counter caught the rising moonlight.  
Ring. Ring. Please don't pick up. Don't pick up.  
"Arisugawa."  
My mind went blank.  
"Hello?" She sounded tired. "Hello? If this is a prank call, this isn't funny."  
She hung up.  
My mind told my fingers to hang up the phone and push myself off the bed, but the fingers had a mind of their own tonight and I simply looked on as they dialed the number again.  
"Arisugawa." I heard her breathing as she waited. "All right, whoever you are. I-"  
"Juri," I said. More like croaked. "It's me."  
Silence. "Ru-Ruka?"  
"I got your message," I said. I was sure I sounded like a perfect idiot on her end and any minute now she was going to tell me so, hang up and leave me stewing in the moonlight of my own misery-  
"I see," she said, sounding unsure. "I'm sorry-I'm sorry I didn't say more…the machine decided to hang up on me before I could…before I…" she trailed off.  
There was a silence that neither of us were inclined to break, but it was a comfortable silence. I sat with the phone cradled in my hand, feeling the damp of my uniform soak slowly into the bedspread.  
"I'm sorry, Juri," I said.  
She didn't ask for what. She didn't ask why. "I understand," she said. "It's-it's a shame you didn't win. That we didn't win. Though I don't know what that would have solved…losing seems perfectly acceptable now that I'm thinking about it, you know?" She laughed. It was the first time I had heard her laugh since I had returned.  
"Who knows?" I said. Standing up, crossing the room and shrugging out of my uniform jacket, hanging it on the doorknob to dry. It would be stiff in the morning. The air conditioning was cold. "Could I have seen eternity?"  
I could feel her confusion. My mind raced back to a conversation real yet surreal, of two duelists, lost souls, standing on the edge of the world.  
_If I could make her shine again, I'd throw my own life away._  
"I didn't win, but I think I finally understood what it means to have the power to bring the world revolution..."  
"What do you mean?" She sounded confused. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but she was only a voice now.  
"The power…is here." The twinge returned to my chest and I rubbed it again, but it did not go away. Soon now. Too soon. "In your heart."  
"Ruka…" Her voice broke.  
I swallowed.  
_If Juri cried for me, I'd know a world of happiness._  
"In your tears…" I said softly.  
"What…what are you talking about?" There was as sharpness in her voice that hadn't been there before, a desperate need to know. I had heard that tone before, but it had never been about me. It had been about Shiori. Always Shiori. But there was no Shiori anymore to come between us…and yet I still felt so alone.  
"I don't understand! Ruka?"  
"Juri," I said, placing the phone on my shoulder and taking off my socks. "It's all right." Moved the phone back to my hand. Sat down on the bed. "Don't worry. Juri."  
"I-"  
"Good night," I said, and then my fingers hung up.  
I was half-afraid, half-hoping she would call me back. One last time. But there was no ring of the telephone, no beeping of the answering machine. Juri was proud, like me.  
I wondered if she realized that good night meant goodbye.  
I wondered if Touga would keep his word.  
The aching was stronger now and I shrugged out of my other sock, out of my pants, out of the wet underwear and undershirt and crossed the room naked to the suitcase already neatly packed and standing waiting for me by the door. Shrugged on a loose shirt and pants, to hide the body underneath that did not remotely resemble a human body now, but the bones of a skeleton on which the flesh and the skin hung.  
I hung up my pants. Neatly folded the damp socks and the underclothes, and placed them on the dresser. Glanced at the medicines on the nightstand, but I wouldn't need them. Glanced at my books and my satchel…but I wouldn't need those either.  
Glanced at the paper on the counter.  
Would it hurt so much, to sleep with it under my pillow for a few more nights? Because I did not have very many remaining, anyway, and I wanted her to be with me when I died. Though I didn't tell Touga that.  
Part of me envisioned a grand scenario, she bursting into the door of my room, gazing at me as I drew my last breath. I'd always been melodramatic like that, though most people would have never guessed. She knew, though. She had always known the better side of me, and the worst.  
She was my better side.  
Fingers lifted up the paper from the counter, unfolding it, reading the word outlined in brief shards of moonlight, fading into the clouds.  
_Juri._  
I opened the door, pulling the suitcase after me, shutting it softly. Turned the key.

_Perhaps he thinks so much of you that he thought it would be kinder to leave without telling you. What if he had said..._

The greatest miracle always requires the greatest sacrifice.  
_But if I die, don't tell her._

_I...I don't believe that story at all. Ruka's alive. He'll always be alive inside me. And he'll come back to me again._

The power of miracles, to the one I love.

_Believe in miracles…  
So that…_

**NOTES**

Tsuchiya Ruka has always fascinated me, but for some reason I've felt compelled to write something for him these past few days. So I did. This fic takes place after Juri's duel, after everything is all over and Ruka is left alone. I've always wondered how he ended up back in the hospital. Did he say goodbye to Juri? To anyone else? Did Shiori ever know, or care, that he died?

Then I discovered the drama track, which is only really eight or nine lines long but casts incredible insight into the minds of Ruka and Juri and also Touga, as a spectator and messenger. It's based on the manga, but I don't see why this part wouldn't be pertinent to the anime as well. Ruka's last words to Touga are especially powerful: "If I die, please don't tell her...but even if you did, she wouldn't believe you...that's my Juri."

Many people believe that Ruka loved Juri. Others don't. There doesn't really seem to be any other way to me to interpret the events of episodes 28 and 29 than as a failed love story, and I have written this to express my point of view on that.

For more of my ramblings on Ruka, visit my Ruka site at http://www.mitsukake.com/aoiryuu/ruka . Arigatou!

   [1]: http://cyborgmermaid.tripod.com/cantarella/ost5a19.txt



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